


From Nothing, I Am

by Cosmic_Biscuit



Series: The Artificial Intelligence Principle [2]
Category: Tiger and Bunny
Genre: Alternate Universe, Artificial Intelligence, Drama, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2011-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-26 23:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Biscuit/pseuds/Cosmic_Biscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>H-01 may have been destroyed, but the robot hero project won't be scrapped that easily, and now that the usage of more artificial intelligence is coming into play, the stakes are higher and the game is more unpredictable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Nothing, I Am

_"And Wild Tiger is first on the scene!"_

Barnaby looked up from his newest set of sketches to see Kotetsu hit the ground running and quickly collar the first of a quartet of thieves. With nothing serious having happened in weeks, he mostly just used the show for background noise while he worked instead of monitoring. This looked like another routine capture, so he only watched long enough to see Kotetsu cuff the first and launch himself after the second before turning back to the schematics.

"Oh, what's this? One of today's criminals is a NEXT-"

 _That_ got his attention. Especially when he saw Kotetsu standing stone still in front of the thief with glowing blue eyes. Concerned, he connected himself to his workstation and prodded at the link between himself and the PDA embedded in a gauntlet of the armor. "Kotetsu?"

There was no response, and the man didn't move even a twitch. Barnaby carefully spread himself out into the armor's systems to check vitals.

Slow breathing, slow heartrate, lack of brain activity... asleep? No, _unconscious,_ he amended when no amount of prodding could get even a pain reaction. But the NEXT hadn't even touched him. Some kind of psychic?

An alarm beep registered and he automatically made the armor throw up a hand to block what turned out to be a piece of rebar swung by the NEXT criminal. Incensed that the asshole would use his good luck to attack Kotetsu instead of flee, Barnaby aimed a retaliatory punch at the man. His control of the armor wasn't perfect, the movements a little jerkier than he would have liked, but it'd have to do for now.

When the criminal finally dropped, too dazed to keep whatever hold he had, Barnaby felt Kotetsu stir. "Ngh," his friend mumbled eloquently.

"You okay?" he asked, concerned, and Kotetsu started fully awake at the presence within his own armor.

"Bunny? What's going on?"

"I'll explain the logistics at lunch. Finish making your arrest."

Once satisfied that Kotetsu was back together enough that he was no longer needed, Barnaby carefully extricated himself from the armor's control and monitoring systems, opening his eyes back in his own body. He blinked a couple of times, then rubbed his eyes and looked over at the television to see Kotetsu cuffing the NEXT while the commentator announced that Blue Rose had successfully captured the other two. Smiling faintly, he picked up his abandoned schematics and went back to work until it was time to go meet his friend.

 

"Saw the replay just before I left for lunch," Kotetsu said as they huddled together on a bench in the park. "Thanks for saving my bacon. Again."

It was becoming a habit for him to be grateful that he could never blush whenever the other man praised him. "It's no problem. I'm just glad you're okay," Barnaby said, then offered the cup of soup he'd been cradling.

"Done already?"

"It's starting to get cold. You better get to it before any of the egg starts to thicken," he said, and Kotetsu accepted the cup.

Though he had yet to ever talk to other people besides Kotetsu, except to order anything, their lunch 'dates' had also become regular habit. Luckily, Kotetsu knew enough interesting little holes in walls that he never had to worry about anyone noticing that he never actually ate or drank anything he ordered. Just being able to catalogue the warmth and new scents was enough.

"That reminds me, anything new on your list today?" Kotetsu asked.

Barnaby thought about it, turning over the day's records so far. "I really don't like fleece or wool," he said. "Too itchy. Most other fabrics are nice, though. Oh, and I like the smells of different kinds of pipe tobacco, and spicy foods. Except the ones with garlic in them. Those hurt my nose."

"Heh. No Italian or Korean for lunch, then, I guess," Kotetsu said, amused, and they settled in comfortably while he finished off the soup. "Have you given any more thought about the offer?" he asked when it was gone.

"To meet your coworkers? I... don't know yet. I mean, I'm starting to get a little better at handling crowds, but that's because they aren't paying attention to me." Most of the time, anyway. He still tended to turtle-shell into his coat and scarf whenever he noticed someone staring. Kotetsu insisted that it wasn't because anyone suspected he wasn't fully human, but it still made him nervous.

"That's true... maybe one at a time, then? That way, it won't be quite so overwhelming."

"That might wor-" Barnaby cut off with a startled squeak when another body suddenly sank down onto the bench on his other side.

"Honey, you didn't tell me you were seeing someone," the newcomer said with a mock-sulking tone, and though Barnaby couldn't make himself turn his head, he recognized Nathan Seymour's voice.

"Oh, hey, guess timing's gonna be sooner than later," Kotetsu said with an awkward little chuckle. "Uh, Nathan, this is B- Rory, a relative of the Doctors Brooks. Rory, you remember me telling you about Nathan, don't you?"

"Yes. Hello," he managed to make himself say, muffled by his protective armor of scarf.

"Aha," Nathan said, and when Barnaby finally looked at him, the expression of calculating amusement made his false skin prickle. "So _you_ were the mysterious little phone voice."

"Caught," Kotetsu cut in, sparing him having to explain. "I've been helping him get readjusted, which was what all the project stuff was about."

"Readjusted?"

"M-medical isolation for a few years," Barnaby mumbled. "I was just released the week after Christmas."

Nathan's expression finally softened a bit, and the man lightly patted him on the head, much to his relief. He'd seen through the cameras just how... snuggly Nathan could be with people. "Oh, darling, I'm sorry. I had to do something similar for a few weeks when my powers first emerged, and it was a _miserable_ experience. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like for years."

Conversation turned to work after that, which was a little easier to handle since he didn't have to do much of the talking, just listen. Still, he was glad when Nathan's phone beeped a little timing alarm. "Ah, time for my next appointment," the man said with a sigh as he gracefully got to his feet. "Oh, before I forget. We have a meeting at Apollon tomorrow, everyone ordered." Barnaby didn't fail to notice that Nathan seemed oddly okay with talking about superhero things in front of him. Maybe the man had heard more of his conversations via the wireless connection to Kotetsu than they'd realized. Kotetsu didn't seem to pick up on it, though.

"All of us? What for?" Kotetsu asked with a faint frown.

"Some new tech they want to introduce. I hope it's not new suits. I've grown rather attached to mine," Nathan said with a faint chuckle, then patted Barnaby on the head again. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Rory. Good luck with your progress."

"Likewise, and thank you," Barnaby said, then weakly slumped over when the man was gone. "Oh, God."

"Sorry about that," Kotetsu said, rubbing his back gently. "I'd been hoping to, y'know, schedule things. But that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Not really," Barnaby admitted. "He was very nice about everything." Suspicions aside, anyway, and at least it didn't look like Nathan minded or was even going to bring it up at any point. "What do you suppose this 'new tech' is going to be?"

Kotetsu shrugged and picked up his garbage to toss into a nearby can. "As long as it's not another robot hero, I think I'm good with anything."

 

Even taking into account the fact that the information had come secondhand, the call to meet had been vague enough that it made Barnaby wary. As soon as it was light out, he woke from warm shutdown and slipped out of bed, putting on his glasses as he headed over to patch himself into the nearest wireless connection.

Even Apollon was sleepy and slow this early in the morning, but he could be patient. He'd been monitoring for about an hour when heroes began trailing in one by one for training, and Maverick arrived to speak with his secretary. When the announcement went over the comm system to meet in one of the board rooms, he instantly went back on alert.

He'd heard of oxygen chambers before, but had never seen one, since most hospitals stuck to masks rather than full immersion for assorted reasons when they used the therapy. Curious, he kept an 'ear' on the conversation as he ghosted through the building, trying to find the devices and any blueprints that might have been on record. The chambers turned out to be stored very close to the armor labs, which he supposed made sense, since Saito would have to maintain them as well as the suits, but Barnaby was mildly surprised to find in the schematics that they contained full monitoring stations as well. Records of vitals would need to be kept, of course, in case something went wrong during a session, but why all the others?

Absorbed in his study, he 'started' slightly at the beep of a phone connection. "Kotetsu?"

"Hey, Bunny. What can you make of all this?"

"The base science is sound, though I still wonder what Apollon thinks they're going to get out of it to be worth spending so much. These things aren't cheap, especially not _three_ of them."

"How much did you hear?" Kotetsu asked, and Barnaby checked his internal clocks.

"Only about the first five minutes. I, um, got distracted."

"You and shiny new toys," Kotetsu teased, plowing on before Barnaby could get offended. "Anyway, apparently the company thinks current performance issues might be stress related. Since the number of therapies we can use without compromising our identities to anyone is heavily limited, they resorted to this. I guess they figure they'll make their money back via us not screwing up on the job."

"Hm."

"Something bothering you?"

"There's just... some strange components. I don't think any of them present a danger to any of you, but they're... they just don't _fit_ correctly. They don't make _sense_."

"The first session's going to be tomorrow. Maybe you could find out then?"

He considered it. On one hand, he _really_ didn't want Kotetsu, or any of the other heroes, going into something he didn't know the workings of, especially considering the situation of the last several months. On the other hand, he really _couldn't_ find out what the monitors were for without them being used. He bit his lip in annoyance, then drew back out of Apollon's security systems and into himself.

"Yeah, I guess I'll have to do it that way."

 

He ended up spending the rest of the day researching, trying to figure out what the secondary monitors could be. The shape of one of the crossbands each chamber had looked about right for a magnetic resonance scan, but the equipment attached to it was incorrect.

After several hours of study, he wondered if maybe the problem wasn't the piecing together... Maybe he was looking at a totally new design instead. It made the entire project in general cloudier, as Apollon had never been a company interested in testing new medical tech once his parents had left, but it would at least explain why some of the elements looked so strange.

"Dear?"

He jumped a little, so focused that he hadn't heard his mother coming. "Ah- sorry. What is it?"

"I was just coming to tell you that your father and I are going to a shareholders' dinner tonight. Is everything all right?"

"Just trying to figure out something Kotetsu showed me from work," he said, shifting the drawings he'd done from memory so that she could see when she leaned over his shoulder. "You haven't heard anything about a new design like this being patented, have you?"

His mother examined the pages, lips pursed in thought. "I can't say that I have. You say Kotetsu's going to be working with these?"

"All the heroes are."

"Odd. I wonder what-" her phone alarm beeped, startling them both. "Oops, time to go," his mother said, looking flustered. "Show me some other time, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am," Barnaby said, hiding his amusement as she quickly kissed him on the forehead and breezed out of the room. Then he settled back into his chair, eyeing the schematics with some frustration. Puzzles were all well and good, but only with the possibility that they could be figured out without someone getting hurt.

Still, he supposed there was nothing to be done for it. With whoever had designed the machines clearly trying to hide their whatever their true purpose was, he was just going to have to wait until morning.

 

Kotetsu, Goodman, and Lopez ended up being the first three into the chambers, being of the strongest health. For all his worries, Barnaby found that there didn't seem to be any physical downsides as he studied the chambers' activity. That was something, at least. And he also discovered that at least one of the monitors actually _was_ a MRI device. Mostly harmless, though he hoped that whoever was at the controls wouldn't be fool enough to turn it on when it was Huang's turn.

The other three monitors hadn't been turned on yet, and those were the ones that interested him now. Careful not to disturb anything, he edged 'closer' through the network to get a better look through the security cameras.

At a prompting from one of the scientists, the tech at the controls began activating them one by one, and Barnaby made a small hiss when he recognized the maps coming up on screen. The scanners were neuroimage-related. Retreating just enough to search his databanks, he identified two of them as MEG and PET, and a third that he didn't recognize at all.

It still wasn't... entirely threatening. After all, regular scans was a common thing in a job that had high risk of stress and brain injury. But Barnaby still couldn't shake the feeling that something was very off about this.

Maybe he should investigate just _where_ the information from the scans was going.

He was a little unsure about leaving while his friend and the others were still in the chambers, but reassured himself that unless some failsafe went horribly wrong, they were in no immediate danger. He'd be back quickly, anyway, right? Gathering up his nerve, he slid into the control system for the chambers and latched on to a stream of data, letting it drag him wherever it was going.

And where it was going seemed to be a medical records chamber. Innocent enough, he supposed, at least until he felt the sharp tug of a split-copy function. Only certain streams seemed to be caught up in the command. Reaching up to grab one of the chains as it parted like a zipper, he found that it was information from one of Kotetsu's scans.

And so was the second one he touched. And the third. In fact, all of the copied chains seemed to have come from Kotetsu's records, not either of the other two.

This couldn't mean anything good.

The new sets of data whisked off away from the records chamber, and he chased after them, trying to find out who was downloading them. He caught hold of one and, for no reason he could determine, suddenly got the itchy, uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched.

Then all of the coding around him went red.

When his eyes snapped open, he found himself lying on the floor next to his workstation. Dizzy and disoriented, he put an unsteady hand to his face, and winced as he registered a confusingly painful sensation at his own touch. As if he were bruised somehow. He sat up slowly, then pushed himself to his feet and found a mirror.

Nothing, even though the phantom pain was still there, like he'd actually been _hit_ to knock him back into himself. That hadn't just been a firewall, or even some kind of anti-virus. He hadn't yet crossed paths with _anything_ that could react like that.

What the hell was going _on_?

 

He'd ended up calling Kotetsu to tell him about the scans and the copies made within the system, but not about the thing that had attacked him. It wasn't exactly like he was hiding anything; he just didn't feel comfortable worrying his friend when he didn't have anything substantial to back up the claim.

Which was why he was going to find some evidence.

The second time, he was much more cautious about which data streams he allowed himself to get pulled into, and what information he touched. Fingers grazed against a status report on the workings of the oxygen chambers, and he got a brief, tantalizing look at something he hadn't found before.

Maverick had personally commissioned them.

Barnaby didn't get the chance to fully process this new bit of data before the coding around him turned from blue to red again. But this time, whatever it was didn't lash out immediately. For a brief, confusing moment, he got the sensation of something wrapping around him-

-Then again was snapped back into his own body and found himself staring at the ceiling once more. This time, it was his shoulders that felt bruised, as if someone had grabbed him tightly and then shoved him.

God, this didn't make any sense. But he wasn't going to let it deter him. He was clearly getting close to something important, and he couldn't just back off as long as there was the possibility that whatever he was looking for might involve or harm Kotetsu.

The third time he ghosted into the system, he discovered that a new robot form had also been commissioned. Again, the question rose of just why the hell Maverick was so willing to work with Rotwang. His parents had at least had the excuse of not knowing what the bastard was capable of, but Maverick surely wasn't similarly in the dark. Maybe he needed to start investigating into that more as well.

He'd successfully managed to copy the schematics for the body -a surprisingly rudimentary work, given what he grudgingly knew of Rotwang's skill... maybe another prototype?- when he realized too late that he'd been washed into the danger zone again. But this time, while he got that sensation of being watched, the coding color didn't change.

Strange...

Pushing his luck a little, he edged closer through the data streams. Deciding to test a half-baked little theory that had just formed in his brain, he 'thought' a message out into the flood.

 _'I'm not here to hurt you.'_

For a moment, there was no change at all, then the coding went white instead of red. This time, he got the distinct impression of fingers threading into his hair and holding for a long minute.

Then everything went red again.

This time, he didn't bother getting up from the floor for a few minutes, just turning over everything that he'd seen and experienced. He still wasn't entirely sure what it was he kept running into, but now he was certain of at least one thing.

It was live.

 

"Hey, Bunny. Anybody home in there?"

Barnaby blinked as a hand waved in front of his face, bringing him back to the park they were sitting in. "Ah?"

Kotetsu gave him a concerned look. "Are you all right? You've been visiting other planets for a few days now."

"I'm sorry," he murmured, taking off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose. "I've been spending so much time on this investigation lately that it's hard to get my mind off it."

"Not that I'm not grateful for you being so concerned over my safety, but maybe you should take a break for a day or so. Even though you say you can't, I swear you look paler than usual."

"Maybe," Barnaby admitted, relaxing a little when his friend's hand rubbed lightly at the back of his neck. He'd been putting off and shortening recharges in order to research longer, and he did feel rather drained for it. "What was it you were saying a minute ago?"

"Huh? Oh. I was telling you that Kaede's gonna be staying with me for a couple of days during spring break. I thought maybe I could bring her along to lunch and let you meet her."

"How much does she know?"

"Uh... well, so far, just that there's an actual Bunny who was the source of the program I told her about."

"I think I can work from there," Barnaby said, and Kotetsu visibly eased up. Unable to resist, he gently elbowed the man. "If you're this bad about her meeting a robot, what are you going to be like when she wants to meet a real guy?" he teased.

"Don't even get me on that subject," Kotetsu muttered, and lunch went on as usual with the distraction.

 

 

It was getting dark when Barnaby sank into the chair in front of his bedroom computer, staring at the screen. He carefully plugged in the adapter cord to begin a recharge, but, instead of moving to his bed, he attached the connection cord to the laptop as well.

It wasn't going to be a full search, he told himself. Just a quick check on things. Then he'd rest until a complete cycle was done.

Closing his eyes, he sank into the data streams and was whisked off to Apollon's science division.

He still wasn't quite sure what to call it yet, but the zone that he'd been keeping tabs on seemed to be becoming... smaller. More compact. More solid. Almost person-shaped. He'd found out the hard way that it could pack a more painful punch the denser it got, so he was careful to stay back as he examined it.

He'd tried sending out more communications to it, but had never gotten any sort of verbal response, just some vague information impressions that he couldn't make heads or tails of. He'd also noticed strange gaps that became more evident each time the zone shrank. As if there were pieces being removed even as it was being constructed.

It hadn't changed any since he'd visited hours before, which he found rather odd, since the progression had seemed to be fairly steady. Maybe... it could only make so much progress in between data uploads? If he could have seen it before he'd chased Kotetsu's mind scans down here, he could have been sure, but-

He arced in pain as the coding around him turned red. This- this wasn't supposed to happen. He was supposed to be out of-

The pain concentrated to points as something he couldn't see lashed around his neck and wrists, dragging him in closer to the zone. He struggled and twisted, trying in vain to wrench free. It retaliated with a hard yank, jerking him in until 'bodies' almost touched.

 _'Not fair.'_

Barnaby physically gasped at the sudden intrusion of a voice eerily similar to Kotetsu's into both his ghost mind and his mechanical one.

 _'What's not fair?'_ he asked.

He didn't get an answer to the question, but this close, he could see something else that caught his attention.

The red was the strongest in the gaps. Where eyes were missing and holes peppered the body, the red glow was bright and blood-colored, while the rest was more of a vague pinkish tinge.

He only got to wonder about it for a brief second before he was again lying on the floor, his wrists and neck feeling like they were on fire. Curiosity continued to gnaw at him, but after checking his internal clocks, he decided he'd played enough Russian roulette for the night.

 

Over the next few weeks, continued observation and another visit by the heroes to the therapy chambers confirmed at least one suspicion. Whatever this new consciousness was, it grew more detailed and whole when it had a fresh data infusion. And yet... the holes were bigger, and its behavior grew even more mercurial. At times it would be almost curious, even affectionate, and then he would be thrown back into his body with no warning or explanation.

It hadn't talked to him again, either.

His efforts in other study had also hit walls, though he'd managed to discover a few interesting things in the process. For example, his mysterious subject had something to do with an encrypted project file that, so far, he'd only been able to decipher a basic name for: Valeyard.

He was sure he'd heard the term before, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember _where_. Something his father used to talk about, maybe?

Barnaby glanced up from his notes when he 'heard' the beep of an alarm in Kotetsu's PDA connection. Train station?

Oh. _Right_.

He'd entirely forgotten. Kaede was coming this evening, which gave him a day and a half before they'd be meeting. He hoped he wouldn't screw this up. Sure, things had gone relatively okay with Nathan, and this time, he had the advantage of having at least talked to the person he was going to be formally introduced to, but still...

He decided he'd best go with another recharge. No use spending the time worrying himself stupid, and he didn't want to make a bad impression by showing up tired and grouchy.

 

Barnaby had been 'sleeping' for approximately three hours when he was jolted awake by an alarm. Wha-

Wait.

That was one of the ones he had tied to Kotetsu's armor. But he hadn't registered any alerts about the need for hero activity... Doing a quick location check, he found that the PDA was still at Kotetsu's residence, which meant the man it belonged to most likely was as well. And yet that alarm was still going off.

He quickly connected himself and blinked through Apollon's security cameras.

The armor wasn't in the lab. Stolen? He didn't know how, but he could check through the video logs-

Another alarm went off, sending a spike of pain through his brain that made him go face down on the desk, clutching his head. When he'd managed to recover to a functioning degree, he dove deeper into the data streams, hoping that alert didn't mean what he suspected it did...

And swore vividly when he found what he'd been dreading. The consciousness he'd been studying was gone as well, and putting the two together, that could only mean one thing. Practically ripping the connection free, he bolted for the door.

 

He'd never really given his mobility functions a full test. Oh, sure, Barnaby was aware that he was capable of more than a human, but the need to lie low had overridden any desire to see just how _much_ more capable. But now he needed that speed and strength, and put it to good use as he made his way across buildings.

The main problem was, he didn't know where the consciousness would take the armor. The first thought to pop in his head was that it would be looking for Kotetsu, its 'source', but did either part really have enough of his memories to know where he lived, or were they just operating on his functional patterns?

Though that question remained, he got an answer to the issue of location when something solid hit him in mid-leap. He crashed to the ground with a yelp of pain, reflexively lunging to his feet and away as the very armor he'd been hunting for landed beside him. Glancing around at their current surroundings, he gauged that they were about ten blocks from Kotetsu's apartment. Maybe he could-

His back hit the wall as the armor suddenly pushed him back, pinning him against brick.

Oh, hell.

Barnaby braced himself to defend, and was surprised when a gauntleted hand instead brushed over his cheek in one of those strangely intimate gestures the consciousness sometimes showed.

"See... this time..." the armor slurred, as if not quite sure how to make itself talk.

"See what?" he asked nervously, and couldn't help a wince when metal fingers crunched his glasses.

"Stop that."

Before he could ask what he was supposed to stop, those same fingers locked in an iron grip around his throat.

"Stop that," the armor hissed again when he began to struggle. "Stop... looking... stop _looking_ at me... _like... that!_ "

He didn't need to breathe. Lack of oxygen wouldn't do anything to his brain. But losing the motor connections to his body would sure as hell do a lot of damage, and he desperately tried to make the hold on him loosen before-

Barnaby let out an anguished scream of pain as his head hit the wall with the next shove and several somethings in his neck cracked sharply, and that seemed to startle the armor enough that it dropped him, backing up. He slumped to his knees, curling in on himself protectively with his own hands to his throat.

When he finally managed to look up, the armor was gone. But at the moment, that was the least of his problems. The damage alarms going off in his head were making him dizzy, and the pain was agonizing. He had to get home. Staggering to his feet, he made his way to the nearest ledge and jumped.

Only several buildings later did he realize that he was too disoriented to be able to keep track of where he was going. And his body wasn't responding properly to the commands he was trying to give it with his brain. He tried to fight down the welling feeling of panic, but all that effort did was leave him afraid _and_ exhausted.

The laughably mundane thought that maybe he should have started that last recharge cycle a lot sooner was the last thing to enter his mind as his legs buckled when he tried to land, throwing him off balance.

He lost consciousness before he hit the ground.

 

- _Secondary power cell now active; half an hour remaining. Please connect for a full recharge immediately._ -

Barnaby opened his eyes to find his vision had become blurry black and white. He attempted to get up, and also discovered that his left arm had stopped responding at all. Okay. Not good, but he could still manage... Rolling onto his stomach, he successfully got to his feet-

-only for a painful catch in his left hip to send him into a heap on the concrete with the first step. Twisting around, he gave the offending joint a weak glare. That hadn't been a control system failure... How far _had_ he fallen?

Another try, another hard landing, and now he was starting to get scared. He had recharge and connection cables built in for emergencies like this, but with no way to get to anything he could wire himself into, he was stranded and fading fast. After another attempt and another fall, he was finding it harder just to keep his eyes open. Maybe he'd try again after a minute of getting himself back together. Just a minute...

Something thudded to the ground nearby, and as his sight faded to nothing, Barnaby thought he saw a familiar glowing metal shape leaning over him.

 

He floated in a dark haze, indistinct noise all around him. Trying in vain to focus, he thought he could almost pick out familiar voices floating in and out of the fog.

" _~ -boratory ~ or somewhere?"_

 _"No time. ~ closer ~ his parents from there."_

 _"Should we ~ ?"_

 _"Dad ~ going on?"_

 _" ~ have to ~ Okay, on three. One, two ~_ "

The noise faded back into nothingness.

 

Then he jolted back to consciousness with a cry of pain that came out clogged with static and the grind of crushed mechanical pieces. His vision receptors snapped back on in sharp, clear color, and he found three worried figures leaning over him. Kotetsu and Nathan he recognized instantly, which explained the voices he'd heard before, but he didn't know the third one. Small, wide-eyed girl... _Kaede_ , he finally remembered after a few seconds.

Then he also realized Kotetsu had just asked him something and he hadn't heard it. He tried to ask his friend to repeat the question, but it came out as a faint, pathetic whimper clouded with the same static hiss and squeak.

"Crap," Kotetsu muttered. "Nathan, help me get him patched in to my PDA, would you?"

The two of them vanished from his limited field of sight, leaving only Kaede watching him in a mix of apprehension, curiosity, and concern.

"Does it hurt?" she finally asked in a small, nervous voice. He blinked at her stupidly for a second before registering the question. His first impulse was to shake his head, to reassure her that he was fine, but something about her expression tugged at him. He decided against lying, and nodded instead.

Her eyes went wider and she backed out of view, and he wondered if maybe he'd chosen the wrong answer. Then a small hand gently nudged his functioning one before taking hold. Grateful for the surprise comforting gesture, he very gently squeezed back before other hands began shifting him to help him sit up. Though they tried to be careful, he couldn't help a small hiss when the recharge cable pulled in its station at his back.

"Sorry, darling," Nathan apologized softly from behind him, and long fingers brushed aside his hair to hook in the connection cord. For a brief, frightening moment, he could feel nothing, and given that the worst of the destruction was located in his neck, he could only hope-

Relief washed over him at the warmth of the data stream going live. _'Thank you,'_ he thought, and it came through the speakers of Kotetsu's PDA in his old dual-synth voice.

"Do you remember what happened?" Kotetsu asked as he sat down on the couch, and Barnaby reflexively sent a fleeting glance in Kaede's direction, unsure how far he'd end up venturing into the territory of "information not yet to be revealed." Fortunately, Nathan caught the hesitation before Kaede could, and neatly scooped up a very surprised girl under his arm.

"I think it's time for a bedtime story with Auntie."

"Wha- _hey!_ No fair! It's not even my bedtime yet," Kaede protested.

"Then it'll just have to be a long one," Nathan replied cheerily, waving at them both.

"You better not tell my kid anything creepy," Kotetsu called after them, earning a very annoyed razz in the general direction of everyone from the kid in question. When the guest room door had closed behind them, he turned and gave Barnaby a rather expectant look.

"Well... the short version is that I had a rather unfortunate run-in with your armor."

Kotetsu blinked at him, and if his current condition hadn't been so dire, Barnaby probably would have found the utterly mystified expression rather funny. "Ah- I hope the long version makes more sense than that."

He continued to stare as Barnaby explained the confrontation on the rooftops as best he could, but slowly the confusion turned to horror. "Some... _thing_ that was patterned off me and can use my suit tried to _kill you_?"

"I don't know," Barnaby said quietly. "My memory of the progression of events isn't the most reliable without a way to check the visual record, but it would have been easy for it to finish me off after the initial injuries."

Kotetsu frowned, thinking. "You didn't manage to rip anything off it, did you?"

"Not that I can remember, why?"

"Well, to be honest, we wouldn't have even known you were out this way if we hadn't come across a couple of those stationary flare lights people use for emergency signals near your location. I thought maybe they'd been yours, but I couldn't figure out why you'd have green ones. Red seems more your thing."

Green lights... Then that _had_ to have been the armor he'd seen leaning over him when his secondary cell had run too low. But if it had placed the lights to draw someone in, then not only had it _not_ attempted to kill him, it had probably saved his life. Slowly, a new theory began to form in his head based on this new information. "Maybe... it didn't understand what it did to me, at least not at first."

"Oh?"

"It didn't actually attack me until I showed fear of it, right? And... the way it was acting when it did was strange. Like it was trying to force me to stop being afraid, but had no clue how."

"Heh," Kotetsu muttered, and Barnaby looked over. "Y'know... In a twisted sort of way, it actually reminds me of Kaede when she was real tiny. If you gave her a toy and she didn't like what it did or the noise it made, she'd try shaking it to make it do something else."

And suddenly, all his frustrating weeks of study clicked. If he was correct that the new consciousness was working off just mental impressions and emotions, rather than any solid memories, then- "That's... I know what's missing."

"Huh?"

"Every time I checked in on it, the consciousness was more solid, but there were more pieces missing. And I think... I think one of the big things that was removed was your response gauge."

"Is that why it seems to have no concept of personal space?"

"I think it goes even deeper than that. Think of the depth and range of the your feelings, then attach that to a situational awareness on the level of a very small child... or an unsocialized dog. It reacts, but has no idea how to tell what reaction is appropriate, and doesn't understand it's done anything wrong until it provokes an even more negative response, like when it hurt me enough that I couldn't help screaming."

"Once it figured out that it had done something bad, it tried to help you," Kotetsu said, catching on. "But... _why_? Why would anyone _intentionally_ program it like that?"

"Maybe they thought that if it didn't have anything prior to go on, it would be easier to order around. But the fact that it could feel guilt and try to rectify the situation means it's also capable of _learning_ , and we can work with that. I'll have to figure out a way to get to-"

" _No,_ " Kotetsu said firmly. "You're not doing anything right now."

"But-"

"We carried you here in a dead heap and you can't even talk on your own right now. You're going to stay right here and rest while I call your folks so they can come see what kind of repairs you need."

"I don't have to go there physically, I can just-"

" _Bunny._ " Barnaby blinked at his friend in surprise when Kotetsu leaned in, expression strangely tense. " _Don't_. Just... just don't." Kotetsu got up off the couch, fiddling with the call band around his wrist to connect to one of the scientists' cell phones, and Barnaby watched him, confused by the palpable change of emotion in the air.

A hand brushed over his hair as he watched Kotetsu pace and mutter, and Barnaby tilted his head back to find Nathan leaning over the back of the couch.

"What's he up to?"

"Trying to get hold of my parents."

"Ah. That prototype body we recovered months ago. That was yours, wasn't it?" Nathan asked after a minute of watching, and though his expression and tone were friendly, Barnaby had the feeling that anything less than full disclosure would be a bad idea.

"Yes."

"And the ghost in the traffic lights?"

"Also guilty," he admitted quietly, trying very hard not to fidget. The hand resumed petting his hair, and that helped him calm down somewhat.

"You know, I'd occasionally heard rumors in the less-than-savory grapevine that the scion of the Brooks scientific legacy wasn't quite as dead as assumed. No one who made the claim was ever able to provide any sort of corroborating evidence, of course," Nathan continued before Barnaby could get nervous again. "I suppose I should have given our benevolent mad scientists more credit than I did. If anyone could have succeeded in such an experiment, it would have been them."

It was an odd sort of compliment, but one Barnaby thought his parents would probably enjoy. The hand at his hair moved down the back of his neck, careful to avoid the connection cable, and he shivered.

"Is this a ground-level design, or based?"

"Based. Kind of on a basic level, really. My parents did the same thing I did with my voice, using algorithm software to artificially age me based on previous records like photos and such."

Nathan's eyebrows raised high. "So this is actually what you would have looked like if you had grown up?"

"At least as far as science can tell," Barnaby said honestly, and the other man made a faint noise of annoyance.

"That's hardly fair at all," Nathan said, expression rather sulking, before he turned his gaze back to whatever conversation Kotetsu was now having over the call frequency. Barnaby had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but at least it looked like Nathan had no problem with keeping his secret quiet, which was good enough for now.

The beep of the call disconnecting got his attention, and he looked over as Kotetsu awkwardly scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Well?"

"Your dad's on his way over with some smaller diagnostic equipment to see how bad the internal damage is. He says for you to stay put and stay plugged in until he gets here. Hope you don't mind sleeping on the couch."

"It's fine," Barnaby said, and Nathan gave him another pat on the head before pulling away.

"I suppose that's my cue to go get a little beauty rest myself. Call me and let me know how things turn out, won't you, dears?"

"Yeah, sure," Kotetsu said with a casual, dismissive wave that was too exaggerated not to be acting, and Nathan joke-retaliated with a light swat before heading out.

The tension in the room came back as soon as the man was out the door, so thick that Barnaby was glad he didn't need air. He probably would have tasted it by this point if he breathed in. Biting his lip to keep from asking what was bothering his friend all of a sudden, he accepted the blanket Kotetsu offered and curled up to nap until his father arrived.

 

"Do you have enough signal control to shut off your sensory net?"

Barnaby made an attempt to send the command down his spine, then hissed when gloved hands pressed against his throat again.

"Apparently not. Damn, that's going to make things a bit more difficult."

He lay stretched out on the floor in Kotetsu's living room, all lights angled so his father could see more easily. After a few more failed attempts at getting through the synthetic skin to reach the injuries in his throat, the older man made a quiet noise of frustration.

"Barnaby, I'm sorry. Without being able to shut off your receptors, there's no way to do this without a complete shutdown."

His right hand involuntarily clenched at his side. He hadn't- he hadn't had to do that since the transfer into this body. Even when he'd lost power a few hours ago, he'd had some sort of... _'being'_. Going back into that state of just not existing at all... Of practically being _dead_...

The fear that had washed over him must have shown on his face, because Kotetsu quietly crouched down to take his hand, looking as drawn and nervous as his father. The contact focused him a little, but Barnaby still felt almost lightheadedly anxious.

"I'll- I'll wake up, right? You promise?" he asked without thinking, the child voice leaking strongly through the connection to the PDA, and for a brief second, he thought he saw actual _fear_ flicker across Kotetsu's expression. He automatically wanted to take it back, to apologize for scaring his friend, but his father's hand gently ruffled his hair, and the thought disappeared.

"I promise."

Barnaby nervously chewed at his lip, then squeezed his eyes shut. "Okay, then."

His connection to the PDA was severed, and he felt a small, hard device press into the port at the back of his neck instead.

There was a sharp burst of blue behind his eyelids-

-then he was gone.

 

He woke up with a weak groan. The automatic calibration of his internal clocks told him it had been three days. "Ow," he muttered, wincing at the lights overhead. Oh, his voice was back. He tentatively touched his throat, and found everything seemed to be back in proper shape and place.

His mother pulled him to his feet. "How are you feeling?"

"A bit like my head's been stomped on, but otherwise, much better," Barnaby said, and she chuckled.

"Well, I have to admit that we've been tinkering around up there. You have a little bit of new hardware near your connection port."

"Oh?" He sifted through his mind and prodded at the new tech. Some sort of... tiny router? Then he figured it out " _Oh!_ "

"Kaburagi told us about your problem in calling for help after the incident," his father said from a nearby workstation. "We thought giving you a few new abilities might help prevent that from happening again if you're disabled."

His mother smiled. "Give it a try."

Her phone was lying on a table, and Barnaby looked at it, wrinkling his nose in concentration. Then grinned when it came to life with a call noise. "I like it already."

"You can use the same connection relay as when you're plugged in, so it's essentially the same thing that lets you net dive, only without having to use a cable."

"You still have the necessary connection port to use a cable, however, if you want."

Always mindful of his strength, Barnaby gave his mother a grateful squeeze. "Thank you both."

"Just keep the usual testing records," his father said.

"Yessir," Barnaby replied as he made his way out of the lab and headed upstairs, and activated the data parcel where said records were kept before deciding to see if he could reach Kotetsu with the new method.

It was strange seeing both the data streams and the physical world in front of him at the same time. Almost as though everything around him was made of numbers and symbols in the colors of their real counterparts. He decided he could get used to it, though, and perked up when the call line was answered. _'Hi.'_

"Hey," Kotetsu's voice said in his head, sounding oddly tired considering it was still light out. "You back on your feet?"

 _'Better than that. I've been fixed so that I don't have to be connected to a computer to make contact anymore. I can literally just think at you now.'_

"That's good," Kotetsu said with a weak chuckle, sounding oddly... _unenthused_. Normally, he _liked_ hearing about upgrades, especially ones that made it easier for them to talk. "Look, I'll talk to you later, okay, Bunny? I'm at work now and I gotta go."

That was strange, too. Kotetsu had always been fond of using their chats as background noise at work. Made it easier to get through the boring stuff, he'd said. Well... maybe he was having to do a shoot or something. It wasn't unusual for them not to talk during those, though Kotetsu usually told him if that were the case. Still, he didn't want to pry too much. _'Sure, okay.'_

"Take care of yourself."

The line connection closed with a beep, and Barnaby felt a little lost. Settling into a chair, he reached out into the networks to see what he might have missed during the time he'd been incapacitated.

News anchors were in a tizzy about some new vigilante calling himself Lunatic. Watching some of the fight footage that had been linked, Barnaby winced slightly. Christ. No wonder Kotetsu had sounded so tired, having to take on someone like that. He couldn't really blame the man for needing a break for a few hours or days.

Besides, it wasn't like he didn't have anything to do himself. Now that he was able, he needed to check in with the secondary consciousness and make sure it was okay as well. He snuggled a little deeper into the chair and sent his mind out towards Apollon to see if it had gone home.

He washed through the data streams of the media capitol quicker than usual -possible side effect of his upgrade, maybe?- and was floating near the consciousness zone in a matter of seconds. The figure he was searching for was there, but... off, in a way. Rather than any of the three colors he'd grown used to seeing, it was a strange sort of ill yellowish-green. He cautiously floated closer, only for it to recoil as soon as it sensed his presence.

 _Oh._

 _'Come here,'_ he coaxed, as gently as he could. _'I'm not here to fight you.'_

There was no verbal response, and for a long minute, the consciousness stayed right where it was. He waited, hoping and patient, and then slowly, it edged closer, rather like a puppy expecting to get smacked on the nose. _'There we go,'_ he sent out, holding out a hand in a non-threatening manner. _'It's okay.'_

 _'I hurt you.'_

A tiny shiver went through him. Thanks to the modulated voice the armor had, he'd actually forgotten how close to Kotetsu's the consciousness' voice actually was. _'I'm not mad at you. You didn't know what you were doing then.'_

Hesitantly, a hand reached out until fingers just barely touched his, and Barnaby had to brace himself against the sudden, unexplained urge to retch that flooded through his mind. Oh, God. He regained control of himself and gently squeezed the offered hand. _'It's okay,'_ he sent out again, and reached out with his other hand to brush fingertips over that blank face the way he tended to do on the rare times he needed to calm Kotetsu down.

He hadn't actually been expecting it to work the same now, but slowly, gradually, the consciousness shifted back to its normal neutral blue and let him pull it closer. _'There, see? All forgiven.'_

 _'Forgiven...'_ it replied, testing out the word as if it wasn't quite sure what it meant. _'Okay.'_

 _'Do you have a name?'_

 _'My designation is V-02,'_ it said, and Barnaby resisted the urge to make a face. V for Project Valeyard, he supposed. Of course Rotwang would be that unoriginal.

 _'A name is more than just a designation,'_ he explained. _'It's a kind of bond. People can have the names they're born with, or the names friends give them... or even pick their own.'_

 _'Oh. I don't have that, then. Do you?'_

 _'My name is Barnaby,'_ he said, and it seemed to be digesting that fact for a minute, before tilting its head slightly.

 _'Why?'_

 _'Why what?'_

 _'Why do you have a name? And why... are you not...'_

It edged toward a different color now, the blue slowly fading to a darker, almost grey shade that made him feel a sort of heaviness in his mind through their shared contact. It looked down, and he realized it was looking at one of the holes in its chest, darker than the rest of its body like he'd noticed before. It seemed to be unable to finish the question, but he figured out what it was trying to say anyway.

 _'Why am I complete?'_ he asked for it, and it nodded, darkening even further. _'Because I was made by people who love me. They wanted me to be whole.'_

 _'What does that mean?'_

 _'Love? Well... um... it's... It's when someone wants to take care of you. When they want you to be around because they enjoy being with you. It's another kind of bond, like a name. There's a kind of love for friends, and for family, and for partners-'_

 _'And from creators?'_ it asked, and the pleading in its voice made him hate Rotwang even more, if that were possible. The fact that anyone could _program_ this level of broken, lonely disconnect and confusion was just disgusting in ways he couldn't even come up with words for.

 _'Sometimes. It's... sort of under the family kind of love,'_ he said, gently petting it to try and ease the misery a little. It sank into his arms, and he bit his lip in both the physical and digital realm against the wave of pain its singular emotion sent through him. He didn't let go, though. Couldn't. Not now.

 _'What about you?'_ it asked, fixing him with an eyeless stare as red leaked into its body a little. _'Do you... Why are you here?'_

 _'It's not fair that you're being made this way. I want to teach you new things, and be your friend, if you let me.'_

The red was still there, but it became more muted, bits of it replaced with a soft purple color that lightened the whole frame a little and eased the oppressive weight in his mind. The consciousness didn't say anything further, but clung to him tightly, and Barnaby quietly considered that if it had gotten this kind of progress, maybe his ordeal had been worth it.

He prodded at the link to Kotetsu's PDA to tell him the good news, before remembering that he wasn't to bother the man. Well... he could just tell him later. Maybe tomorrow, once this whole Lunatic thing had had a little time to blow over.

They'd figure all this out.

 

Once Barnaby's new student discovered that the only pain in their lessons was the occasional finding out the hard way that some things shouldn't be poked, the consciousness proved to be an inquisitive and fast learner. In return, Barnaby was getting better at interpreting and reacting to its ever-widening spectrum of emotional responses.

White for curiosity, lavender for hope... "I'll have to make a magpie song for it or something," he said mostly to himself one evening, and ended up explaining nursery rhymes for over an hour. He hadn't really minded.

On the other hand, Kotetsu was beginning to worry him. His friend had missed their usual lunch date time _twice_ in just the last week, without even calling, which wasn't like him at _all_. He could be late sometimes, maybe, or have to bow out, but at least Kotetsu always let him know or apologized when it had happened before. And when they _did_ meet, Barnaby could barely get three words out about the progress in his research before Kotetsu would completely shut down the topic of conversation. Even just trying to find out _why_ the man was so adamant that he drop the project was met with evasion or, worse, silence.

For awhile, Barnaby merely attributed Kotetsu's confusing change of behavior to work stress. There had been four more Lunatic sightings and one confrontation in the past weeks, and that was taking a toll on _all_ the heroes' psyches. He'd stopped bringing up his visits to the consciousness or his study into what he could find about the project itself, trying to be patient and keep to gentler topics. It hadn't really helped matters. Kotetsu was still being quiet and agitated, sneaking him worried glances about _something_ when he thought Barnaby wouldn't notice.

Barnaby was still puzzling over the issue when he arrived in the data tank, only to find his new friend was gone. A quick check through the security network told him that the Tiger armor was still standing innocently in Saito's lab. So where-

A vicious shock like being hit by lightning suddenly streaked down his spine as sharp somethings sank deep into his neck and began to spread under his 'skin'. Screaming, he managed to wrench himself away, a tiny bit of his own coding ripping away in the process, and put some distance between himself and whatever had attacked him. When he turned back to look, he was stunned to see a stark, inky black version of the consciousness staring at him. He involuntarily put a hand to what now felt like a bite wound and backed further away in case it intended to try again, but that motion seemed to be enough to bring it out of... _whatever_ state it was in. Shadow gave way first to a confused dark orange, then to the yellow-green of guilt.

 _'Wait,'_ he said quickly before it could retreat. _'Wait. Are you okay?'_

A lighter orange threaded in. _'Am_ I _okay? You're-'_

 _'What happened?'_

 _'I- I saw a command prompt for something called a directive upload. And that's all I remember.'_

Directive upload... Rotwang must have started encoding actual orders. And if the consciousness didn't remember them when it was its normal self, then the black form wasn't a new emotion... it was some kind of control via remote.

This had the potential to be very bad, especially since he hadn't hunted down all the project particulars yet He called up Kotetsu's PDA.

Normally, he only had to wait one ring, maybe three if his friend was away or busy. When it skipped over to voicemail after the sixth, he was mildly concerned. _'Um, hi. I know you're tired of hearing about the robotics issue, but this is really kind of important. Call me back, please?'_

His neck had stopped hurting when he closed the connection, but he could still feel that tiny piece missing. And judging by the look on his student's face, it was noticeable. _'Hey, don't worry about it, okay?'_

 _'But I hurt you again.'_

 _'It's nothing serious,'_ he said, though he couldn't quite be sure of that yet. _'See? I'm functioning just like always. Come on, let's start that lesson on types of music you asked for earlier.'_

 

He'd ended up leaving four more voicemails over the course of the next week, and they hadn't gone to lunch at all. And now, worry was beginning to become fear. Had he done something wrong? Forgotten an important day? Was Kotetsu angry with him for something?

 _'Maybe he just doesn't love you anymore,'_ the consciousness had said as he hung up yet another unanswered call. Then it had gone bright pink with embarrassment when it realized what it had just done. _'That was a stupid thing to say, wasn't it?'_

 _'No, it's okay. A little blunt, but not stupid,'_ he'd replied, but truth was, it had hurt like hell. Now that he thought about it, he had been monopolizing the man's time an awful lot since they'd met... maybe Kotetsu had finally just gotten tired of it all.

 _'That doesn't mean I should just stand back and wait until this project does something to hurt him,'_ he thought to himself once he'd disconnected from the data streams. _'Even if he doesn't want to hear it... or see me again... this is necessary.'_

Especially in light of some of the other information he'd discovered once he'd found out the nature of the directive protocols.

He looked at the clock, then gauged how much time he had if he went by normal human methods. The idea of walking all the way to Apollon on his own was more than a little intimidating, especially since the lack of lunch meetings meant he'd been spending more time as a computer ghost than he had as a person lately. Still, if he wanted to catch Kotetsu before he left work, he had to get moving. Screwing up his nerve, he grabbed a light jacket for the wind outside and headed downstairs.

 

Apollon's central lobby was a whole lot scarier when he wasn't inside the cameras. Off to the side, he could see a knot of press talking to Sky High, and there were other people everywhere. His hands clenched in his pockets, then he straightened his back a little and headed for the receptionist's desk.

"Name?" she asked, much more curtly than any of the ones who worked with his parents.

"Er, Rory Brooks, to see Kotetsu Kaburagi," he said.

She looked over her glasses at him, and suddenly he was reminded of a very scary teacher he'd had when he was only in third grade. He reflexively clenched his hands a little tighter, trying to keep his nerve from deflating. "You're not on the appointment schedule."

As he tried to think of an answer, he looked in the direction of the elevators. Almost as if summoned, Kotetsu stepped out of the one that had just arrived on the floor, and Barnaby automatically tried to wave to get his attention.

Kotetsu actually glanced over... then looked away and kept walking.

It was technically impossible, but Barnaby was sure he felt his insides go cold as he weakly let his hand drop. He hadn't been imagining things. Kotetsu _was_ avoiding him. For a moment, he almost considered just slinking out to go home before this could get any worse. Then the sick misery was snuffed out by a sudden flood of determined anger.

Ignoring the receptionist's clipped words behind him, he started across the lobby to try and catch up. _"Hey!"_

No one else seemed to notice, the press still occupied with a hero and everyone else with whatever errands they were rushing about for, but Kotetsu briefly looked up before eyes widened behind the mask. Barnaby didn't give him the chance to make an escape, grabbing him by the sleeve.

"Bunny, what the hell-"

"We have to talk. _Now_."

"Whatever it is, it can-"

" _No_ , it _can't_. If you'd bothered to listen to _any_ of my voicemails, or even _talk_ to me at all in the past _week_ , you'd _know_ that," Barnaby snapped, before his anger wilted a bit. "Look," he said, more like his usual hesitant self. "I don't know what I did to- to make you not want to be around me anymore, but this is _important_. Just let me pass on my information, and I'll go, okay?"

Kotetsu stared at him, normally expressive face unreadable, then he made a faintly wounded noise. "Not here."

Barnaby could at least compromise that much, and nodded, letting the other man pull him into a secluded stairwell.

"Bunny, it's not- It's not that I don't want to be friends anymore. I don't think I could ever give that up. But for God's sake, you have to stop this... _obsession_ of yours."

"But if I don't figure out a way to stop this, you-"

" _That's exactly the problem!_ "

Barnaby took a step back, unable to help being startled by the explosion. Kotetsu raked a hand through his hair, clearly seething even as he tried to rein in his frustration, then continued. "I can handle getting hurt. I run the risk of getting hurt or even dying on this job almost every goddamn _day_. Whatever's coming after me, I can find a way to deal with it, even if it takes awhile. But _you_ \- I _can't_ deal with _you_ getting hurt again. Do you have any idea what it feels like to basically watch somebody _die_ in front of you, _repeatedly_ , knowing that it's because of you? I can't- Just... just back off, okay? Let it go, before you end up getting broken again. You don't have to be involved in this."

Barnaby blinked at him, then tilted his head a little. "That's what the past few weeks have been about?" When Kotetsu nodded, he motioned his friend closer, then leaned in-

-and sharply rapped him on the skull, earning a pained yelp.

"Jesus, what was that for?!"

"Because you are being an idiot without any conceivable equal right now, and I can give you at least three good reasons why," Barnaby said, moving closer still so that Kotetsu wouldn't be able to get around him to avoid this.

"Reason one," he said, holding up a finger. "Considering the people who are in charge of this project and their likely motives, I've been involved in this since before I even _met_ you, whether either of us like it or not. Getting out now would be next to impossible. Reason two, you _need_ me on this investigation, because not only can I get into places that no one else you know can, I've also made considerable headway into both the information gathering and in looking after the digital entity patterned off of you."

"And finally, reason three," he said, tone gentling a bit as he reached up to brush a hand against his friend's face like he'd done a thousand times before. "If my current theory about this entire project is correct, then _you_ are the one in the most danger. And I'd rather have to be fixed a _hundred_ times than run the risk that you might not get out of this alive. Capisce?"

Kotetsu looked away at the floor, then Barnaby found himself enveloped in a tight hug. "Yeah, I got it. I don't like it, but I got it."

"If it's any consolation, I've been considerably more careful about where I allow my physical self to go," Barnaby said dryly, and that got him a weak little laugh in return. He put his arms around the other man and gave him a little squeeze. "I understand why you feel like you have to be protective, and I know this is a hard thing to ask, but please trust me a little more?"

Kotetsu drew back, and Barnaby worried that maybe his friend was going to push him away anyway. Then calloused fingers slid through the short hair at the back of his neck, and Kotetsu managed a smile. "I'll try, okay?"

Barnaby made a relieved noise. "Fair enough. Come on. I've got to catch you up on things."

 

"-and as far as I can tell, Maverick doesn't even seem to _like_ him all that much. Every time I've seen them talking lately, there's always this... I don't know, sort of veiled _annoyance_."

"He seems to be doing an awful lot of protecting Rotwang, for someone who doesn't want to work with him. I would have figured he'd be more likely to go for your parents."

"See, I thought that too. But I heard him and Mom arguing about the whole concept this morning. Which I tried to call you about," he added, and Kotetsu winced slightly. "I think he and my parents must have had some kind of ethics falling out at some point, because it sounded like they'd had this rejection fight more than once. It might even be why they left the show to begin with."

"So since he can't get the roboticists he wants to compromise their ethics, he goes for the second best who has none at all."

"Exactly. Rotwang's treating this personally. No matter how illegal, he'll take any opportunity he can get to show up my parents, and he incorrectly blames you for H-01's destruction."

Kotetsu sank back against the bench, scrubbing a hand against his face. "Christ," he muttered tiredly. "But we still don't know why Maverick wants so badly to get rid of me."

"I don't think it's _you_ , specifically. At least not in Maverick's perspective."

"Oh?"

"I think this is a test run for an entire eventual team," Barnaby said, toying with the sleeve of his jacket as he thought. "Because you're currently the oldest and the closest to retirement-"

"I'd be the easiest to make disappear," Kotetsu finished for him, and Barnaby nodded. "And if it works, then they start going after Antonio and Nathan as next in line, until we're all gone."

"I haven't found out the purpose behind this, yet," Barnaby admitted. "It seems... strange, considering that HeroTV's purpose was originally NEXT acceptance. But I'll keep looking."

Kotetsu gave him a rueful smile, then reached over and ruffled his hair. He didn't say anything, but Barnaby didn't mind, just content to have that affection back for the time being. They ended up just sitting, leaned against each other, until the sun started going down, then Kotetsu started when his PDA beeped an appointment alarm. "Crap, I almost forgot."

"Forgot what?"

"Wild Tiger and Blue Rose have to do an appearance on a radio show tonight."

That twigged something in his memory, and Barnaby frowned faintly, trying to chase it down. "Radio show..." he muttered, thinking, then snapped his fingers. " _That's it_! It was a radio show!"

"Huh?"

"The digital entity's base files are called Project Valeyard. I _knew_ I'd heard the name _somewhere_ , but I just couldn't put a connection to it until you said that. _The Valeyard_ was an obscure old drama program my dad was a huge fan of as a kid... something or other about a dimension-traveling adventure hero. Mom said he had records of it and everything."

"Huh. Maybe Maverick was a fan too?"

"Maybe. I think Dad still has all the old records in the attic. Maybe if I go through them, I can find out what they're planning to do with the digital entity."

"Good ide-" The PDA beeped a more insistent alarm, and Kotetsu scowled at it. "Yeah, I know," he told it grouchily, then hefted himself to his feet. "Gotta go. Let me know what you find, yeah?"

Even though the entire situation was serious, Barnaby couldn't help brightening just a little at the casually trusting request. "I will."

 

Barnaby was again glad he didn't need to breathe as he rifled through the dusty recesses of their home's attic. He was starting to get a little worried about possibly clogging a few essential motors, though. Thankfully, it never came to that, as he finally located his prize: a box of old records his father had saved over the years. There were dozens of vinyl discs in their protective cardboard sleeves, and only about half still had readable labels.

Huh. Looked like he'd have to make a night of it.

Some more digging located an old turntable as well, and he carefully balanced both as he climbed down. He headed back to his room and set everything on his personal workstation, then eyed himself and his clothing.

A quick clean-up would probably be necessary before he got too involved with the study.

Once he'd finished that, he settled into a chair and plugged himself in for recharge before selecting the first record to listen to. He just hoped they were one series only, rather than compilations. That was just going to make it harder to keep track.

He'd gone through four when he felt what seemed like a gentle, curious press on his mind. He stopped the record he was on and, in a blink, he was connected to the data streams, and was surprised to find the digital entity hovering near him.

 _'Hi?'_ it asked, nervous and unsure.

 _'Hi,'_ he said back. _'How did you get here?'_

 _'I don't know. I just wanted to see you.'_

He looked around, and found it seemed to be tethered to his desktop, which wasn't even on. Maybe their connection through the data streams overrode it? Or maybe it had something to do with the bite from earlier. He couldn't be sure, but for now, it seemed harmless.

 _'Are you okay? Coming here didn't hurt you any, did it?'_

 _'I don't think so.'_ Arms curled loosely around his shoulders as the entity settled itself at his back, still apprehensive. _'This... this is okay, isn't it?'_

Barnaby gave it a smile and gently patted a hand. _'It's fine. Good, even. If we're lucky, you being more mobile will make it harder for your creator to override you.'_

Relaxing a little, it nuzzled the now-closed place where the bite wound had been, and Barnaby managed to keep himself from reacting to the tiny shock of not-quite-pain that the contact caused. _'You seem... happier,'_ it murmured against his neck.

 _'Kotetsu and I had a talk. We've worked things out, and now we're friends again.'_ It didn't say anything, just held a little tighter, and when he turned his head, he caught a glimpse of a troubled expression and threads of a dark wine color. _'Something wrong?'_

 _'You forgive him, then?'_

He blinked at the odd tone in its voice, before he thought he'd figured out what was bothering it. _'That's part of how forgiveness works. The person who caused the problem can't make the one they hurt forgive them. That decision belongs to the hurt one. I'm choosing to forgive him, because even though he was being stupid, he had good intentions by it and didn't mean to hurt me.'_

 _'Would you still forgive him if he had meant to hurt you?'_

 _'I don't know,'_ Barnaby admitted. _'But luckily, it didn't go that way.'_ Its expression eased a little, and he began gently petting. _'I'm researching some old radio recordings. Want to join me?'_

 _'How do I do that?'_

 _'I just have to modify my sound reception system a little to feed the information into our connection. Interested?'_ He felt the nod against his neck, and made a few internal tweaks to his physical body before switching the turntable back on.

 

"Oh no, this can't be!"

Barnaby looked up from his notes at the annoying screech of the ingenue's voice. If there was one thing that was driving him nuts about the research, it was the constant "And then-!" He supposed it would have been much less annoying if he'd been listening to this as his father had, in weekly cliffhanger broadcasts, but in a long stretch, it was making for a damn near unfollowable plot.

The entity seemed to agree, shifting restlessly near him. _'You could go get some rest,'_ he said softly, but that only made it cling more stubbornly.

 _'No. Not until you're done,'_ it said with all the grouchy petulance of a child trying to stay up past bedtime, and he had to bite back a smile.

 _'Have you given more thought to what you want for a name?'_ he asked, keeping an ear on the program as he tried to help the entity stay focused.

 _'Want you to pick,'_ it mumbled, and Barnaby blinked in surprise.

 _'Me? Why?'_

 _'You said names were bonds, right? And bonds are love?'_

 _'That's true.'_

 _'I don't know what I am yet. And my creator doesn't love me. So I can't pick, and neither can he. That leaves you.'_

Barnaby turned his head to look at it, maybe a little stunned. _'I- ... I'm not very good with names,'_ he finally forced out.

 _'Then I will wait until you think of one,'_ it replied, adamant.

Barnaby opened his mouth to reply, then they both started at the piercing shriek that came from the turntable. He'd been so caught off guard by the entity's statement that he'd stopped listening. Regaining his wits, he carefully stopped the record and turned it back to the thing he last remembered, to listen again.

And went still.

"The Valeyard was... Oh, God."

 _'What's wrong?'_

Barnaby shook his head to clear his mind, and drifted back into the data stream a little. _'Listen to me. Go home, and find a place in your data tank where you think your creator won't be able to find you easily. Be careful.'_

The entity tilted its head slightly, then nodded and wisped out of view. Barnaby checked the time and found it was already mid-morning, which meant that if they were back on schedule, Kotetsu would be leaving for their usual meeting time soon. But 'soon' was too far away, and he reached out through the network even as he ran downstairs to grab his jacket.

"Hey, Bunny, I'll be with you in a few minutes. I'm-"

 _'No time!'_ He could see Nathan there with him through a nearby camera, but no one else. Good. _'I think I found the big plot point they're using. The Valeyard turned out to be_ his own villain.'

Kotetsu stared. 'Come again?'

 _'In the fiftieth broadcast, the sidekick discovered that the original Valeyard had been killed by his evil twin months earlier. The twin, having gone insane as a result, started playing both parts, foiling his own crimes through the use of theatrical tricks and dimension altering devices both had collected through their travels.'_

"So they're making a robot copy of me that's already slightly unhinged to set him up as a villain-"

"And then replace you with him to handle both sides," Nathan cut in. "After all, why pay an actual hero and worry about the collateral damage an actual criminal could cause when you can control everything about the situation?"

"And if it does work, then they replace the rest of us until HeroTV is running entirely staged by robots with maybe one or two actual crimes thrown in for variety."

 _'Exactly. But I still can't find a reason_ why _. The change in profit margin would be substantial, but unless Maverick is just going to stop training heroes entirely, the question of what's going to happen to all the NEXTs is still up in the air.'_

"For now, it might be best to focus on finding out what we can about the physical capabilities in case we do end up having to fight it," Nathan pointed out. "I'm sure none of us would like a repeat of the H-01 fiasco."

 _'I can't get a good look at the new body for the digital entity. Whether they've gotten wise to my abilities or not, they've been smart enough to remove all security cameras from the laboratory area where Rotwang's working. But I'm willing to bet that whatever he's making, it has a holographic overlay system. There's no other way it would be able to switch between people quickly enough for this insanity to work.'_

"Well, if you can't get in your way, guess that means we'll have to get in the normal way."

"Huh?" he and Kotetsu both asked at the same time.

"Break in, of course. You said yourself that they had no security camera network, and there isn't a lock yet that I can't get into," Nathan said cheerily, and Kotetsu gave him a look.

"Jesus, man. One of these days, we're gonna find out something you _don't_ know how to do," he muttered, then turned back to his PDA. "Hear that, Bunny? Guess we're gonna be spending lunch with some slightly illegal activities. Meet us by the south entrance, okay?"

 _'I'll be there,'_ Barnaby replied before cutting the connection link and jumping up the side of a fire escape. He was going to need a little more speed than usual to get there with enough time to do this before any of them would be missed.

 

The door slid open without so much as a beep once Nathan was through with it, and the two of them followed him inside, Kotetsu shaking his head a little. Once in, they spread out, looking for any useful information or the location of the entity's new body. Barnaby had found a more complete set of internal schematics and was finishing copying them to his memory when Kotetsu waved them over with a soft whistle. He hurried to get the rest down, then approached. "What did you-"

Barnaby cut off when he found himself staring at- himself. Or, rather, a near perfect copy of what his old body had been, only larger and fitted for some kind of even bigger casing. "Son of a _bitch_ ," he hissed under his breath, startling Kotetsu with the swearing and completely failing at restraining the shocked rage.

"Tch," Nathan muttered in disgust from behind him. "Too good to work with them, but not above stealing their work for his own."

Kotetsu put a hand on his back, and Barnaby forced himself to calm down. _Not now_. He could punch the bastard later. This wasn't about him right now. He bit his lip, then crouched beside the platform to examine the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"Rotwang's an arrogant ass, but he's not _entirely_ stupid," Barnaby said as he activated the scanners in his eyes, pupils turning a soft NEXT blue. "Just making sure we aren't going to be tripping any alarms by touching this." His instincts proved correct, as he ended up having to deactivate three weight sensors and a fingerprint scanner before he approached his double and the other two stood watch.

He'd also been right about a holographic overlay. He could sense the image generators under the casings. The robot was also much more dense than his old form had been, the casings made of a heavier metal. Rotwang clearly wasn't taking any chances of someone like Sky High being able to fight this one; it was like prodding a tank.

"Someone's coming," Nathan hissed before he'd finished his examination, and Barnaby quickly put everything back in order before all three of them melded into the shadows as best as they could as Rotwang himself passed, heading directly towards the lab table where the robot lay. Barnaby turned up his sound perception again as the man moved past his hiding place, gritting his teeth as he fought back the urge to just reach out and rip the man's head off right then and there. Only the reminder that he wasn't the only one hiding here stayed his hand long enough for them to slip out unnoticed.

"Well, that explains his part in this," he muttered bitterly once they were a safe distance away.

"Eh?"

"Disgusting bastard's a NEXT bigot. He was grumbling about crossing paths with Karelin earlier today."

"Ugh. I'll have to go talk to the kid later," Kotetsu said and Nathan nodded agreement. Considering what he'd seen of Cyclone's esteem issues through the cameras, Barnaby had a feeling that would be an _understatement_ after having to put up with Rotwang. "Though that makes Maverick's involvement make even _less_ sense now. There's no way he can't be aware of it, as much as he seems to know all the time."

"Don't know. Maybe I can find something out by looking into whatever made him and my parents part ways. But I think for now, we'd best lay low. From what I could tell, there were still too many unfinished internal parts for the robot to be anywhere near functional, which still gives us some time to prepare before they make a significant move."

"A wise idea," Nathan said. "And while you do your research, I think I'll do a little of my own. We work on different channels, after all, might as well spread the net as wide as we can while we have the option."

Barnaby nodded agreement to the suggestion and, almost on cue, the two heroes' call bracelets beeped an alarm.

 _"Bonjour, Heroes!"_

The three of them glanced at each other, then Barnaby made himself scarce as they answered the call. Time to get back into the thick of things.

 

There was another trip to the oxygen chambers before the week was up. While monitoring Kotetsu's physical health, Barnaby also cautiously watched as the data was infused into the entity in its black state. He was unwilling to get close enough to find out what specific impressions or information was being uploaded this time. Not after it had tried to consume -for lack of a better term- him the first time.

Only when it had fully regained its neutral pale blue color did he dare approach. _'How many of those upload sessions have you had since the one I was here for?'_

 _'I'm not sure... maybe... three? Including this one. I think. It's hard to remember, since there isn't always a command first. Is that bad?'_ it asked when Barnaby frowned in thought.

 _'He's working oddly quickly, considering the body isn't even complete. This could be a sign that the project's timetable is being pushed up. And yes, that's bad,'_ he answered when it looked like it was going to ask again. _'The sooner they have full control and a finished form, the less time we have to protect you or Kotetsu or anyone else.'_

The entity quietly processed that, and looked like it wanted to ask something further, but it hesitated. Before it could make up its mind, Barnaby felt the nudge of a call attempting to reach him. _'Hello?'_

"Hope you don't mind that I got the relay number from Tiger, honey," Nathan's voice said from the other end, and Barnaby's nerves eased.

 _'No, don't worry about it,'_ he said as he memorized the signal and number for future contact. 'Have you found anything?'

"I wouldn't call it _evidence_ , specifically, but I did find an interesting little tidbit concerning the show's casting. Did you know that our little dragon was specifically _requested_ to come audition?"

 _'Why would they need to do that? I thought Academy attendance was breaking record again.'_

"You'd be correct on that. But it seems none of the potential graduates have... the right flare for the job, you might say."

Meaning their powers weren't strong and flashy enough. Hm. _'And before that? Miss Lyle was the only one chosen from her class, wasn't she?'_

"Correct."

The class before that had been Karelin and most of the current Second League... He was beginning to see what Nathan was implying. As the class numbers went up, the number of show-suitable heroes went down. Correlation didn't always equal causation and all that, but if Maverick _thought_ he had potential evidence that whatever had caused the rise of stronger NEXTs was now... _fading out_ , somehow, then keeping the show afloat with or without them might have become a priority over the original purpose. It wasn't a perfect hypothesis by _any_ stretch, but it was currently all they had to go on without being able to get any answers out of the man himself.

 _'That_ is _interesting. Oh, and I have something of my own to pass on. It looks like we may have to work a little faster to get the entity self-stable. Whether this was mandated or Rotwang is acting on his own, he's definitely progressing faster than expected.'_

"Hm, not good. I'm meeting Kotetsu in a few minutes to go to a group interview; I'll be sure to let him know before we catch up to the others."

 _'Thank you,'_ Barnaby said, then closed the link. He was certain that he was beginning to get a headache, even in his ghost state, from keeping up with all of this. As he shuffled information around to put all the new pieces into the puzzle, something tugged on his arm. The entity floated next to him, 'holding' the ball of data that was their shared audio history of the recordings he'd been listening to earlier.

 _'Can we finish?'_ it asked.

 _'Are you sure you want to? You didn't seem to enjoy the story much.'_

 _'Um...'_

Barnaby watched the emotions slowly weaving around its body. _'Why don't we find something else to listen to instead?'_ he asked after a minute or so. He'd guessed that it was really not the story it wanted, but the company, and when it turned a mix of dark purple and lavender, it seemed his hunch was correct.

Checking the time and comparing it to the schedule Kotetsu had given him earlier and the interview already airing on television, it looked like they had a good three hours at least before he'd be needed to confer on anything on that front. And his parents were holed up with another prosthetics project based on his current 'nerve' system, so that was another free space. Since he needed to keep tabs in case Rotwang started up another upload, Barnaby saw no reason why they couldn't at least have a little fun with it. He quickly finished putting everything from his research in order, then pulled up a library of radio shows that had already been transcribed to data files. _'How about_ X Minus One _?'_

 _'What's that about?'_

 _'It's a bunch of science fiction plays made from short stories famous writers came up with. They're kind of fun to listen to, even though a lot of their predictions ended up being wrong.'_

 _'Okay,'_ it said, brightening a little further as it snuggled up next to him, and he opened up the first episode file.

 

They went through six episodes before he had to check in with Kotetsu and his parents, and then he'd pulled out of the data streams. He'd been spending most of his recharge times working at the same time he was plugged in and, like before, it was beginning to take a toll. As he laid down on his bed and hooked himself up, Barnaby had to blink several times before the coding numbers cleared from his vision.

On one hand, he really wanted to be sure nothing was going to happen yet. The project acceleration had him a little on edge. On the other, even someone like Rotwang had to sleep eventually, and he had promised Kotetsu that he wouldn't risk any more power scares. Setting himself for a full recharge cycle, Barnaby curled up on his side and closed his eyes.

He was plagued by strange 'dreams'. The black shadow of the entity hovered over him, and sharp white teeth flashed in its head as it smiled, as if debating which part of him to eat first. It lunged and he had no way to defend-

-and then jerked awake at communication alert beep in his head. His internal gauges indicated he'd completed about eighty per cent of the cycle over the last day and a half. Good enough. _'Go ahead, Kotetsu.'_

"Sorry if I'm interrupting anything, but one of Nathan's people in the Apollon building said there's weird movement coming from the direction of the robotics lab. We're keeping an eye on it, and it definitely looks like Rotwang's keeping busy."

Those dreams... Maybe...

 _'He might be getting ready to send it on its first test run.'_ Or mission, but surely they wouldn't have rushed the project _that_ much... would they? The show was still doing too well in ratings for that. But then, the end of the quarter-season was coming up soon, wasn't it? He checked the airdates to make sure, and found it was going to be up at the end of the month.

He had a bad feeling about this. _'I'm on my way.'_

 

Nathan was waiting for him in the central plaza, and hauled him off towards the south entrance almost the second he arrived. Caution took over, and his eyes started glowing again as he reached into the security systems to divert cameras as they went. "Any change yet?"

"Not so far, but that doesn't mean we should let our guard down."

They met up with Kotetsu at the hallway that contained the lab, and Barnaby immediately noticed the uncomfortable static in the air. Before he could mention it, the lights dimmed, then flickered before coming back up again. It was the only warning they got before the heavy metal doors exploded outwards, the resulting cloud of dust and rubble sending them all reeling. Barnaby recovered more quickly than the others, and caught a glimpse of a huge dark figure through the smoke and dust.

Almost on reflex, he reached out over the data stream connection to try and find out what was going on, and collapsed into a screaming heap at the vicious assault on his mind that resulted. The shadow entity held fast and bit in, trying to rip out more of his coding. He couldn't tear free-

Something else grabbed him and shook hard, snapping the hold

He arched off the floor in agony as he was jolted back into his own body, and his vision refocused for him to find Kotetsu half-cradling him, looking a little panicked. "If- if you get your armor, don't let it in close," he rasped weakly, trying to piece his psyche back together. "It can attack the operating system."

"Shit. Do you know what it's going to do?"

"No. Any time I try to make contact, it tries to... to _eat_ me. I can't even tell if it's being controlled remotely or operating on a full set of programming orders."

Kotetsu's expression turned mildly disgusted for a second at the idea of the entity _absorbing_ other systems, then the older man ducked over him protectively as whatever new shape the robot had shot over their heads.

"This is a bit flashier than we were anticipating," Nathan coughed from out of his field of view once the cloud had started to clear a little.

"Maybe Maverick didn't order this one?" Kotetsu wondered. "I mean, even as little as this whole plan makes sense, there's no way he'd just blow up part of his own building for this, right?"

"That may be true. And if Rotwang jumped the gun for whatever fucked up reason he's come up with, we may be looking at something more violent than we're prepared for. But where would he send it?"

Barnaby felt a sick, cold fear slide through his mind. The prosthetics contract his parents had started working on last week. The designs based on his body had won out over-

"My parents," he said in a small voice, and the other two stared at him, eyes going wide as the realization sank in for them as well. "He's sending it after my parents."

 

For all its implied massive size, the entity's new body could move _fast_. At some point, Rotwang must have studied the Hundred Power and Barnaby's own abilities closely enough to model the robot's speed to match or better them. "Too good to work with, but not above stealing indeed," Barnaby muttered under his breath, echoing Nathan's words from their earlier search.

Fires and emergency evacuations had already broken out at the lab when they arrived, and he saw one of the receptionists among those being treated by medics. Recognizing her as one of those who worked most closely with his parents, Barnaby called in her direction as he headed for the entrance. " _Sophia_! Did you see what happened?"

"It- There was just this big black _thing_ , and it came through the south windows, and there was _glass everywhere_ -"

She was in shock. Biting his lip, he refrained from questioning her further and instead started reaching into the camera networks as they entered the compound to search. Nearly a third of the devices he came across were useless, and he mentally marked those as specific rooms to search. Between having to sort that out and get other injured scientists and staff to the medics outside, it was an entire nervewracking hour before they were forced to come to the conclusion that the robot was no longer anywhere in the compound.

And neither were his parents.

"We'll find them," Kotetsu promised gently when Barnaby momentarily stiffened at the hand on his back.

"I'm coming as well," he replied, and pinned his friend with a flat stare when Kotetsu looked like he might protest. "I know what we said about me being careful. But they're my parents. It's no different than if Kaede had been the one taken."

Kotetsu twitched at that, then looked away for a brief moment before giving his shoulder a squeeze. "Okay. Let's go."

With no idea which direction the robot had gone, he had to be able to search a wider area than he ever had before. It hurt, electricity visibly crackling across his body as eyes flared blue once more, but he didn't care. Wild Tiger and Fire Emblem had already put out word to the other heroes that the Doctors Brooks had been the victims of a robot-based kidnapping, which had brought the cameras out to play, and he used that to his advantage, adding every bit of surveillance tech he could reach to the mental map he'd constructed.

A good two miles southwest, almost to the edge of the city, he found a familiar inky void in what he could see. "Found the entity."

"And your parents?"

"Not sure."

They had closed half the distance when he began picking up radio relays. Police and heroes had been authorized to use all force necessary to take down the robot... something that could have only happened with the approval of the Justice Department and _all_ the sponsor company heads. Looked like Maverick had finally figured out what a bad idea it was to fuel a project based on a long-held personal grudge. _'Too little, too late,'_ Barnaby thought bitterly.

Then he heard another bulletin of interest, and hissed.

"What's the problem?" Kotetsu asked, landing next to him on the rooftop.

"Lunatic's been spotted. Police think he's after the entity as well."

"Oh, joy. As if we needed more complications. Can you pinpoint his location?"

"Only within a radius of a few blocks. I can't narrow it anymore than that."

"It'll have to do. Track him as best as you can. We might have to intercept him too."

Barnaby nodded, tweaking his sensors to keep track of the police reports, and they were off again.

 

They were on top of the area where the void had been, but the entity had located a dead spot in his security net, leaving them searching half blind. They'd ended up having to split up to cover more ground, and Barnaby flinched at the crackle of static in his head as a call pushed into his neural network. Blinking white spots out of his eyes, he switched frequencies to ease the headache. _'Na- Fire Emblem? What is it?'_

"I tried calling Tiger's communicator, but he's not answering. We've found our missing scientists."

Barnaby had to put his head down against a metal railing against the sudden, brief wash of relief. _'Are they all right? What happened? Are-'_

"Calm down, honey. They've got a few nasty injuries, but they're still in pretty decent shape for having been hauled halfway across the city. Something must have spooked the robot into dropping them off."

Had it picked up their search? Or maybe Lunatic was closer than he'd thought. Either way, he was just glad his parents were out of danger for now. They could just concentrate on catching the entity and trying to bring it out of the control state before it hurt anyone else. _'Thank you,'_ he managed weakly. _'I'll pass it on.'_

If he could get hold of Kotetsu. Why wouldn't he respond-

He got his answer as the familiar white and green armor came crashing through the plate windows behind him, pursued by an unmistakable mass of solid black metal. "Tiger!"

" _Stay back!_ " Kotetsu ordered, vaulting off the railing to avoid a punch. The black armored thing didn't give an inch, lunging after Kotetsu as he leaped to another building. Barnaby made to follow, only to catch another flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, this time in blue.

 _Lunatic._

Without thinking, Barnaby used a nearby fire escape to swing, dropping down fast and hard to tackle the man before he could get a bead on the robot. The reactive burst of flame threw him back several feet into a wall, singing his clothes and synthetic hair. "He hasn't killed anyone!" Barnaby snapped, refusing to back down. "That means this isn't your business, right? Stay the hell out of it!"

"Hasn't killed anyone _yet_ ," the modified voice replied impassively as the vigilante got up. But instead of aiming again, the gaunt figure melted back into the shadows, and Barnaby couldn't shake the sudden feeling that he'd just been handed a blank exam paper. He didn't have time to wonder about that.

Especially not when he felt the signal of Kotetsu's armor die.

 

Kotetsu was still up and moving when he caught up to the combatants. Hundred Power had taken over where the armor had failed, and his friend was still fighting for his life against the entity. But if it was anything like the girl and H-01 had been, Kotetsu was going to run out of time long before it ran out of power, and he had to do something, _now._

Not caring whether the shadow side of the entity attacked him in return, he lashed out over the digital streams, hitting it with the feedback collected from the assorted relays he'd been covering since this fiasco had begun. It reeled with a strange, mechanical humming noise that reminded him of a creature they'd heard in the science-fiction shows, and backhanded Kotetsu hard across the roof before turning in his direction.

Connected across the data link, he could see the sharp teeth of the shadow in front of him, and braced himself. _'Is this what you want? To be his mindless killing machine?'_

 _'Directive orders,'_ it replied in a blank, empty tone that slid down his spine in a way that made him shudder involuntarily. To his physical ears, it was another low, robotic hum.

 _'To hell with that!'_ He dodged an attempt to grab him and leaped back, trying to draw it away from Kotetsu. _'You're better than the bastard who made you! What about all that instrumental rock you decided you liked? Or all the different birds you wanted to see? We haven't even finished the radio show yet! Are you going to give up all your chances at learning to be your own person just to follow his orders?'_

The robot hesitated, but only for a moment. Then _something_ came out of its right arm and slammed him hard in the chest, knocking him flat. Before he could get up, a heavy metal boot came down on his stomach area, and he cried out in pain as the sheer weight of the armor made the seams of his casings groan. He tried to reach through the data connection to make it back off, and only received a sharp, draining bite for his trouble.

 _"Bunny!"_

He hadn't seen Kotetsu get back up. When his friend lunged in an attempt to rescue him, the robot's arm swung around to aim at the older man, and Barnaby made a faint noise of despair to echo Kotetsu's sound of shock at the realization that it had produced some kind of _gun._ He caught the flash of blue again. Lunatic was back in a vantage point, and if he didn't figure out a way to make this standoff stop without shots being fired, it was very likely all three of them were going to die.

Needle-sharp teeth sank deeper into his projection's shoulder, slowly siphoning out more of his coding, and in a flash of pain and desperation-fueled inspiration, the words came out. _**'Tora. Stop this.'**_

 

For a long, heartstopping minute, nothing happened.

Then, very slowly and carefully, the fangs holding him released. He found himself shoved back into his own body with a jolt and a gasp, and stared up at the black armor as it turned its head to look at the gun it still had aimed at Kotetsu. Tilting its head slightly, it slowly lowered the weapon, then dropped it.

And little by little, lights began to flicker on in spaces of the armor. Pale blue lights that slowly shifted to dark purple.

It looked down at him, then shifted so it was no longer standing on him before crouching low. He reflexively flinched when it reached out, then armored fingers threaded into his hair in an affectionate gesture he recognized. He stayed where he was, unsure whether or not this was some kind of trick.

"You gave me a name," the armor rumbled quietly, sounding almost... _awed_.

Barnaby stared up at it. "I'm... that was-" He faltered, unsure how to explain that he hadn't really done a very good job of it, but it didn't seem to matter. The armor leaned down even further, lightly pressing its faceplate against his mouth, then straightened and looked around before seeming to simply vanish.

Barnaby continued to stare at the empty space for a moment, then painfully pushed himself to his feet. Looking in the direction he'd noticed Lunatic, he saw nothing but the steam from a nearby vent. Whatever test he'd been handed, it looked like he'd passed. Dampening his sensory network a bit -even if the robot hadn't broken anything, that was going to be a nasty bruised feeling for awhile- he stumbled over to Kotetsu.

"What the hell did you do?"

"I think I broke whatever leash Rotwang had on it."

"Good," Kotetsu said, then groaned slightly and put an arm over his ribs. When Barnaby attempted to assist, however, his friend made an attempt at waving him off. "I'll be fine. Go find your folks."

"Nathan called to tell me they already had about the same time the robot attacked you," Barnaby replied. "Hold still." A cursory exam was all it took to figure that the ribs were bruised at best, and much more likely broken, and Barnaby carefully helped his friend to lie down. "This isn't exactly how I'd hoped for all this to go," he said as he put out a call over the network's radio system for medical assistance.

"Eh, I dunno," Kotetsu said with a faint grin. "Nobody died, the robot's not under Rotwang's control anymore, and the bastard's probably gonna get arrested. Property damage and injuries aside, I think I'll take it."

 

Barnaby hadn't been expecting the flurry of lights and camera flashes that greeted them when medics carefully wheeled Kotetsu's gurney out of the factory they'd ended up on top of. Even his friend taking hold of his hand wasn't enough to stave off the sudden wave of panic, and he was infinitely grateful when Nathan appeared at his side, protectively shielding him with his cape as he warded off questions from reporters.

"Okay, honey?"

"N-not really," he managed to squeak, and Kotetsu squeezed his hand.

"Sorry, Bunny," the older man murmured quietly enough for the cameras not to hear. "We should have planned for that."

Barnaby shook his head. In the chaos of hunting down the robot, he hadn't been thinking at all about what he'd been doing would look like if the cameras had managed to catch him. And coming out of a combat scene with Wild Tiger was just the icing on the cake as far as the audience and reporters were concerned.

Thinking about it logically didn't do anything to help the fact that he was about to expire from nerves, though.

Hidden from the cameras by the cape, Nathan gave him a one-armed hug. "Come on. Let's let them get Tiger loaded up, and I'll take you to the hospital to see your parents."

"Go ahead," Kotetsu urged. "This'll be pretty routine for me."

Barnaby couldn't help a tiny snort at that and nodded, letting Nathan lead him to his car.

 

His mother was sitting up in bed, her right arm bandaged and in a sling, and smiled when she saw him. " _There_ you are. I was getting worried after they mentioned you'd joined the hunt."

"Sorry for the scare," he said, kissing her on the forehead in greeting, and decided it would probably be best not to mention his own reaction to them being taken in the first place. "Where's Dad?"

"He got the worst of it, so they're still running tests. All I've heard about so far is a likely concussion," she replied, clearly annoyed about being kept in the dark. "I got off fairly light, really, though it's a lucky thing that I'm left handed."

"God forbid you be kept from work for a couple of days," he teased, and she gave him a very gentle punch in the arm with her good hand.

"No child of mine is going to sass me, even if he _is_ one of the heroes of the day," his mother said with a mock sniff, and he chuckled as he sank into a chair. She looked him over critically. "How much power did you expend on that, by the way?"

"I had an eighty per cent charge and... I'm down to twenty," he admitted after a quick check. Damn, and he'd only been up and running again for a few hours, he thought with an internal wince. He was going to have to be more careful about how he used that networking trick. He didn't regret it, though. Emergencies were emergencies, after all.

Still, now that he wasn't focused on other things, he could feel the exhaustion creeping in. "I won't let anyone see," his mother said softly, and he murmured his thanks, shifting to attach his recharge cable through a gap in the chair where it would be less likely to be noticed. She reached over and ruffled his hair as he sank into warm shutdown to get some rest.

He drifted through the hospital's information networks as he slept, watching over his mother and checking in on his father and Kotetsu. As he watched his friend get bandaged up, he was startled by a feeling like a kiss on the back of his neck, and turned.

 _'Tora?'_

The entity had changed again when he looked at him. While there were still holes and gaps, the largest one in his chest had closed. And he had eyes now. He reached out, and Tora took hold of his hand.

 _'Are you okay? Where are you?'_

 _'Charging,'_ Tora replied. _'And hiding.'_

Barnaby understood that need, and tugged his student/friend closer. _'Do you need us to come get you?'_

 _'No, I- No,' he said. 'I think... I think I want to stay where I am for awhile. I mean, now that I can move like you, I don't really need to have a physical state... right now, at least.'_

For a second, he didn't understand. Then he remembered how terrified he'd been of his own body the first time he'd woken up made of metal, and thought of how much worse it would have been if he'd woken up from being controlled by someone else at the time. _'It's okay,'_ he soothed quietly. _'When you're ready. Until then, you know how to find me for anything you need.'_

That seemed to comfort Tora, the dark purple color threading in a bit. _'When... things have calmed down a little... can we finish_ X Minus One _?'_

 _'Of course,'_ Barnaby replied, and was surprised when the response this time was unmistakably a kiss.

 _'Thank you. See you soon, Angel.'_

Barnaby blinked awake in the chair beside his mother's bed, and found her sleeping. Rubbing his head a little, he smiled in amusement at the fact that he'd somehow picked up another cutesy nickname. "Definitely your kid of sorts, Kotetsu," he muttered to empty air, then unplugged himself to check on his mother.

 

"They haven't found anything at all?"

"Not hide, nor hair. As far as the Sternbild police are concerned, Dr. Rotwang vanished off the face of the planet."

"Geez," Kotetsu muttered, staring into his coffee. "Maybe setting the robot on the Brookses was like a last hurrah of sorts."

"Or maybe someone else did the vanishing _for_ him," Barnaby pointed out, remembering some of Maverick's private conference reactions he'd observed after the incident.

"Either way, it looks like the case is dead in the water," Nathan said, stirring a little honey into his tea. "We can't prove Maverick's an accessory without your information, and we can't source that information without revealing you. And I'm vetoing _that_ plan right now," he added when Barnaby opened his mouth. "No more media-induced panic attacks, hm?"

"Okay," Barnaby said sheepishly, then blinked when Kotetsu pushed his newly-arrived plate of food at him. "Eh?"

"You're still cataloging, aren't you?" the older man asked.

"I'd forgotten," he confessed. "I'd been so busy with Tora's lessons." And the lack of their usual lunch dates, but he'd stopped bringing that up. Kotetsu had made amends, so it would just be rude now. The bowl of soup on the plate was the only thing he hadn't 'had' before, so he carefully picked it up and pushed the plate back. When he'd handed the bowl back as well, Nathan offered his cup of tea, having been watching with interest.

"Cute," was all he said, amused, when Barnaby returned it after a minute. "Which reminds me. The gossip media's still all a-flutter about the mysterious new tech controlling NEXT who fought alongside Wild Tiger."

"Ugh, don't want to hear about it," Barnaby said. "Ms. Joubert has already called the labs once over the issue."

"Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for _that_ conversation," Nathan said as he and Kotetsu both laughed at the idea. Barnaby rested his chin on his hand, half-listening as they began chatting about the upcoming interviews for the week.

Then smiled when he felt a familiar press on his consciousness. _'Ready for another episode?'_

 _'Yes!'_

Still keeping an eye on his friends, he accessed the digital library.

 _"Countdown to blast-off. X minus five... four... three... two... X Minus One. Fire!"_


End file.
